The Ohio Collegian
April 10, 1997

"Columnist urges Christians to look for themselves in the AIDS Quilt"

On Thursday, April 3, 1997, I was affected by AIDS.

I didn't contract the disease, if that's what you're thinking. No, last Thursday I saw the Ohio Premiere of "Quilt: A Musical Celebration" in Hugo Young Theatre.

"Quilt" is chiefly a collection of monologues and songs "For, From, and About The Names Project AIDS Memorial Quilt." Directed by our own Professor Ric Goodwin and delivered by some of the best high school actresses, actors, and technicians in Ohio (alongside Susan Brown, Ken Martin, Charlene Gross, and Scott Greenleaf of our theatre department), the musical was probably the single most moving piece of live theatre I've ever seen.

My show review consists of nothing more than the first song's opening line: "Out of something terrible, there is something beautiful." I haven't cried this much since I personally lost someone close to me.

Now I should deliver a speech about the need to fight this disease, but I'm in no position to do so. Sure, I've got an AIDS ribbon on the visor of my car, I wore another one all weekend, and I even have two World AIDS Day buttons--one on my guitar case and one on my bag--I carry around all the time. But I've got the same low attention span as everyone else. I'd like to think that, after seeing "Quilt," the images and voices of this terrible tragedy will forever be burned inside my retinas and eardrums. For, although I'm probably in the lowest risk group: a non-drug- using, heterosexual virgin with a rare blood type (although blood transfusions are screened now), this is my problem as much as anyone else's.

Instead, I think that, come tomorrow, I'll be more worried about my homework than about people dying. I'll block the AIDS epidemic out of my mind and, in the end, viewing "Quilt" will've changed nothing. I'll still donate a buck (when asked) to AIDS research or another charity and keep those buttons on my bags to show "how much I care," but I, like so many others, still don't yet get the point.

People are dying. Unless the disease is confronted and ultimately stopped, then it's only a matter of time before I or someone close to me is struck.

Don't give me any applesauce about AIDS being "God's way of punishing homosexuals." Friends, God "causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous," (Matthew 5:45, NIV), and--if it once was--AIDS is no longer an exclusively "homosexual disease." And if we, as Christians, believe homosexuality's sinful, that's fine. Just stop condemning homosexuals and start loving them like Jesus has been trying to teach us.

Unfortunately, I've committed sins too. Just because I didn't get a disease for my sin doesn't make me any better than someone who did. In "Quilt," Christians are often portrayed as being judgmental, proud, hateful, and/or conceited--traits not so high on Christ's "ideal attributes" list. If this is their view of us, maybe we're not treating AIDS victims with enough compassion.

In fifth grade, my best (only) friend was dying of leukemia. We didn't know much about it at the time, other than he was sick and dying. In the cafeteria one day, he wasn't hungry and asked me if I wanted to finish his sandwich. I did. I remember thinking momentarily that I might die now too 'cause I ate from his sandwich. This silly misconception/prejudice turned me, however briefly, against a friend who was dead within the next month. Of course, I know now that I can't get cancer through sharing food. You can't get AIDS that way either, nor can you from handshaking, hugging, or even kissing. Knowing this, with our fifth-grader prejudice, we still avoid both the subject and the people like the plague.

"Journey of Hope": This upcoming Monday (the 14th) at 7 PM in Hugo Young, there's a "Presentation by Children Living with AIDS." If you're interested, I suggest showing up and showing your support for (as writer/composer Jonathon Larson called them in his musical, "Rent") "people living with, living with, not dying from disease."

They are still human beings. They still have feelings. The question is: do we?